Sweet Poison (32 page)

‘Oh, I am sorry, Jeffries, how rude of me. This is Miss Verity Browne. She was there when the General died. I don’t know whether you saw her then?’

They were still standing on the doorstep and it looked as though that was where they would remain unless Edward produced something to persuade the suspicious old retainer that they were allies not the enemy. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ Jeffries went on, ‘but weren’t it you who wrote about the General’s death in the . . . in the
Daily Worker
?’

It had taken Jeffries some moments to remember that journal’s name and Verity got the feeling that the
Daily Worker
was not often seen in Cadogan Square. Why was it, she wondered, that gentlemen’s personal gentlemen, as she had heard Edward describe valets, were so unwilling to throw off their chains and join the revolution? Could David and all the rest of them be wrong, and were the working classes satisfied with their lot? If so it was a poor outlook for the revolution. The Communist Party couldn’t be solely a middle-class movement. If anything was to be achieved, the Party had to capture the hearts and minds of the workers, and the workers Verity had met recently did not seem likely to rise and cut their masters’ throats or cry ‘A la lanterne’ as the tumbrels rolled by.

‘Yes, Jeffries,’ said Edward firmly, ‘but Miss Browne is a friend of mine and you can trust her absolutely.’

Verity was gratified. Edward continued: ‘She and I believe that the General may not have died by his own hand, as it is said. I mean – he did die by his own hand but he did not intend to do so.’

Still casting suspicious glances at Verity, Jeffries opened the door and she and Edward stepped into the narrow, gloomy little hall. It was odd, Edward thought, for such a handsome house to be so dark. Then he saw that it was a house in mourning: every shutter was closed, every curtain drawn to block out the sunlight. The occasional shaft of light which penetrated the gloom made rainbows on spiders’ webs. Verity shivered and wondered whimsically if they would bump into Miss Havisham on their way to the pantry in the basement. The basement was clearly Jeffries’ domain, his home, and hadn’t the musty smell which pervaded the rest of the house. There was even a window unshuttered through which a weak and watery light shone. They were at the front of the house below street level and Jeffries’ view of the world outside was the small ‘area’ with steep stone steps leading up to the street.

The melancholy manservant offered his guests no refreshment and brought out no chairs, so they perched against the knife cupboard as well as they could. ‘We may be quite wrong, Jeffries, but it is our belief that the General did not die accidentally. We wondered if you had any thoughts about it?’

‘How do you mean, my lord?’ said Jeffries unhelpfully.

‘Well, for instance, is it true he carried a cyanide pill around with him?’ Edward ploughed on.

‘Yes, sir, I told Inspector Pride he did.’

‘Was it a pill he had from during the war?’ Edward asked.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Jeffries in mild surprise. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I have read that some officers carried cyanide in case they were captured and did not want to undergo questioning.’

‘Yes, my lord, that was it. The General used to joke about it sometimes.’

‘Joke about it? How, man?’

‘He used to say he was afraid of nothing and that death had no dominion over him. I am not sure what he meant exactly, my lord, but especially when his wife died – God rest her soul – and later when he became very ill, I think it gave him comfort to know he could end it all.’

‘But suicide – didn’t he consider that cowardice?’ said Edward unwisely.

‘General Craig was the bravest man I ever knew, my lord,’ said Jeffries indignantly.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Edward said.

‘But you don’t understand. No one can who did not know him like I knew him.’ The little man screwed up his eyes and Edward saw that he was remembering something. ‘I was his servant during the war, his batman. Once, about seven o’clock in the evening but very dark, we were in his car near the front line inspecting the battalion before an attack. I should tell you, he wasn’t one of those generals who never came near his men – not at all. I was driving. He was asleep in the back – he had been awake for two days and two nights but he had a knack of being able to catnap whenever he could. He used to say to me, “Jeffries – Napoleon, Wellington, all the great generals, they had the knack of sleeping when and where they could, even in the midst of battle if need be. I’m not saying I’m any sort of Napoleon but at least I have that in common with those great soldiers.”

‘Anyhow, on this occasion, with the guns pounding away on all sides and the flashes – well, I have no very good sense of direction at the best of times – I turned right instead of left and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of soldiers speaking a foreign language. I thought at first they might be French because they were holding the next part of the line but then I realized they were talking German. I can’t speak German, you understand, but I could recognize it. I stopped the car and very gently woke up the General and told him what had happened. He was wonderful, sir.’ Jeffries’ eyes were shining as he remembered those far-away events as if they were yesterday. ‘We started to turn the motor car around but we were challenged. Cool as a cucumber the General pretended he was a German officer. In the dark they could not see his uniform and it was too dangerous for anyone to shine a torch. He made the soldiers help turn the car around – it was a very narrow path we had come along and they had to manhandle the old girl. Then, just as we had thanked them and I was starting the engine, a flare lit up the sky and the soldiers saw who we were. “Drive like hell, Jeffries,” he said and I did. When we got back to our lines we found that the General had taken a bullet in his shoulder but he never made a sound, just said, “Good work, Jeffries, but next time wake me if you don’t know the way!”’

Jeffries seemed exhausted after telling his story and slumped in the wooden armchair which was the room’s only seat. ‘He was not a coward, my lord,’ he mumbled.

‘No, of course not. I never meant to suggest it. I just meant that I cannot believe a man like the one you describe would have killed himself.’

‘Maybe not, my lord, maybe not, but,’ said the man, shrugging his shoulders, ‘he was very weary of this world. He thought it had all gone to the dogs. He thought there was going to be another war and that all he had been through had gone for nothing.’

‘He hated Germans?’

‘He did, sir, he hated the Hun as he would call them – the Hun or the Boche – never Germans, he would never say Germans. I asked him once how he spoke such good Boche and he said he had been at a university over there as a very young man. Would it be Heidelberg, my lord? I think that was what he said.’

‘Yes, Heidelberg.’ Edward thought for a moment and then asked, ‘Did he have any special enemies?’

‘No, my lord,’ said Jeffries firmly.

‘No one, no one at all? No German for instance?’ Edward pressed.

‘Not that I know of, my lord. He did not like a lot of people – people he read about in the newspapers – but as far as I know he had no special enemies.’

Verity, who had been silent up to now, said, ‘Jeffries, forgive me for seeming to pry, but how did the General’s wife – Dolly, was that her name? How did she die? It must have hit him very hard.’

Jeffries looked at Verity suspiciously but seemed reassured by what he saw. ‘Lady Dorothy, that was what I called her, miss. “Lady Craig” I suppose I should have said. She was a wonderful woman. There cannot have been another woman in the world who would have made the General happy. If you see what I mean, miss, he was a man’s man. He had no truck with women as a rule. He hated chatter, hated dinner-parties. I was surprised when he told me he was going to that one, in fact. He said, “Jeffries, I’ve got to do my duty and that’s why I’m going. To tell you true I would rather I was charging the fuzzies on board old Diamond” – that was his horse when he was out in the desert with Lord Kitchener, my lord, long before my time, of course. “I’d rather be in a cavalry charge than go, my friend,” he called me that sometimes,’ said the valet proudly, ‘“but I’ve got something I must do before I die.”’

‘What was that, do you think?’ said Edward sharply. Somehow he felt that here might be the key to the whole mystery.

‘I don’t know, my lord,’ said Jeffries disappointingly.

‘But you were going to tell us how Lady Craig died,’ Verity persisted.

‘Yes, miss, that was very sad.’ Jeffries shook his head gloomily. ‘I think she had been ill for some months before either the General or I noticed anything was wrong. You know how it is, sir,’ he said, looking at Edward as though asking for forgiveness, ‘when you see someone every day you don’t notice things. I thought she was looking thin and tired but I thought that was because she was worrying about the General. You see, I knew he had already been to the doctor, and though he wouldn’t tell me what the doctor had said, from things I overheard him say to Lady Dorothy, I think the doctor must have told him then he had the cancer.’

‘When was that?’ asked Verity.

‘That was about two years ago.’

‘And Lady Craig died a year ago?’

‘A year ago, miss. She collapsed one day on the stairs and I ran for the doctor while the General stayed beside her. When the doctor came he looked solemn and between us we got her into bed. He told the General that she needed an operation immediately.’

‘That must have been a terrible shock for the General.’

‘It was, miss. He almost went out of his mind. He blamed himself, you see. He thought that he should have seen she was ill but he had been too bound up with his own illness to see anything. Anyway, my lord, she had an operation that very week and died on the operating table. That was when I feared my poor master might kill himself, but then he heard something or saw something which made him change his mind although he was certainly never the same again.’

‘Have you any idea what he saw or heard?’ inquired Edward gently.

‘No, my lord.’

‘It wasn’t the invitation to have dinner at Mersham Castle?’

‘Oh no, my lord, it was long before that. I think it might have been something the doctor said to him after his wife died, but I am not sure why I think so except that, apart from the doctor, he hardly saw anyone at all.’

‘I see. Well, thank you, Jeffries, you have been most helpful. I promise you if we discover that the General died because . . . because of someone else, we will tell you. Are you coming to the inquest?’

‘Yes, my lord, Inspector Pride has given me a train ticket.’

‘Well then, we’ll see you there. Oh, by the way, a last question: could the General have got confused and taken the cyanide pill by mistake for one of his painkillers?’

‘No, my lord,’ said Jeffries stoutly, ‘he could not. The pills he took for his pain were small whitey-brown things he kept in a silver box in his pocket.’

‘The cyanide capsule – did you ever see that?’

‘Yes, sir. He showed it to me once, my lord, when we were talking about the war, and I saw it after.’

‘And that was different?’

‘Yes, my lord, quite different. It wasn’t round – more like a lozenge and made of a sort of glass, only not quite glass, to break between the teeth, he told me. Also it was much larger than his other pills.’

‘And he kept the cyanide pill where?’

‘He used to keep it in an envelope in the safe, I believe, my lord, but since Lady Dorothy died he carried it in his fob – the pocket in his waistcoat where in the old days he kept his watch on the end of his chain.’

‘It couldn’t have fallen out into his drink by accident?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘You are very sure.’

‘I am sure, my lord.’

‘But it’s odd, isn’t it, that he should have taken the trouble to transfer the cyanide pill to the waistcoat pocket of his dress suit? I mean, even if he carried it around for some sort of comfort it gave him to know it was there, it was surely taking things a bit far to take it into dinner with him?’

‘I expect he thought it would be dangerous to leave it lying around his room, my lord, in case a curious servant found it and did themselves an injury.’

‘Yes, perhaps so,’ said Edward soothingly. ‘You have been very helpful, Jeffries, and I hope talking about it – the General’s death, I mean – hasn’t distressed you.’

‘No, my lord. To tell you the truth, I spend all the time thinking about the General. I feel my life has ended with his, my lord. Without wishing to sound presumptuous, my lord, I was closer to General Craig than many wives are to their husbands and that is no disrespect to Lady Dorothy, and the world seems an empty place without him.’

Afterwards, when they were walking away from the dark, sad house, Edward said, ‘You know, Verity, I’m beginning to think we have got this all wrong. I think we have made an assumption that has made us blind to the truth of the situation.’

‘I think I know what you’re going to say, Edward,’ Verity interjected. ‘What if it was General Craig who was out to do murder and by some chance drank the poison he intended for someone else?’

‘Only, he would have seen it as his duty – as an execution,’ exclaimed Edward, banging his hand into his fist. ‘But who of that company would he have wanted to murder?’

‘Any of them – most of them – I should think,’ said Verity soberly. ‘I mean, we know the Bishop was a convinced pacifist. Craig wouldn’t have liked that, and we have two eyewitnesses who say they actually saw him pass the old man the port with the poison in it.’

‘Yes,’ said Edward, ‘but don’t forget Larmore. Maybe he knew Larmore was selling secrets to the Germans.’

‘Von Friedberg, as a representative of all that he hated in the new Germany, would have been an obvious target if he had wanted to have his revenge on his old enemy.’

‘Mustn’t forget old Gerald,’ said Edward firmly. ‘Maybe he felt guilty because our older brother, you know, would have been duke if he had not been killed in the early days of the war – fighting under whose direct command? General Craig’s, that’s whose. And he may have thought Gerald was making it too easy for the Germans. I mean, all these dinner-parties trying to treat the Nazis as though they were reasonable people. That would have upset him.’